When was the last time you said your pleases and thank yous? Well, if you're a Taipei resident, chances are you haven't said them in a while, according to Reader's Digest magazine.
The US-based magazine conducted a survey of 35 cities around the world recently, probing the politeness of each city's residents. Ranking 29th overall, Taipei turned up at the bottom of the list, with just six other cities considered ruder. And when it came to "document drops," one of the three tests Reader's Digest reporters used to score politeness, Taipei came in 31st, with only four other cities scoring worse. That test involved a reporter "accidently" dropping a stack of papers in public and seeing if anybody would help pick them up.
Luckily, Taipei fared better on the "service tests" in which the reporters observed whether sales clerks would thank buying customers. The survey also consisted of "door tests" (observing if people tended to hold the door for others), which Taipei flunked as well.
The good news is Taipei is not alone -- of the 10 Asian cities surveyed, including Taipei, none scored above 50 percent (New York was ranked the politest city with a score of 90 percent). Singapore and Seoul were ranked 31st and 32nd respectively.
Among the politer cities, Sao Paulo, Brazil, which ranked fifth, is so courteous that even blackmarket vendors are mindful to thank their customers before running away from the police.
The survey also discovered that there seemed to be an odd correlation between wealth and courtesy. A Reader's Digest reporter in Johannesburg, South Africa, for instance, noticed that the nicer people dressed, the fewer courtesies they extended to strangers.
Seasoned diplomat Loh I-cheng (
Although Loh, now retired, did admit that Taipei residents could be nicer, he said that of the many locales he has traveled to in his career -- including all of the cities the Reader's Digest surveyed except four -- Taipei was one of the most civil.
Radio Taiwan International talkshow host Andrew Ryan agreed, saying that the survey was flawed because it was based on Western standards of courtesy.
"The generosity and respect that the Taiwanese show to guests -- the way mass rail transit [MRT] passengers give up their seats for each other, the men holding women's bags for them. These are all acts of courtesy that Westerners would do well to learn from the Taiwanese," Ryan said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS